At its second quarterly meeting of 2012, the Georgia Bioscience Joint Development Authority on June 13 voted to rebrand the Highway 316 corridor as “Georgia’s Innovation Corridor.”

The departure from the single focus on attracting “bioscience” companies to the largely undeveloped corridor is primarily the result of Caterpillar Inc.’s ongoing development of a large but, more traditional, manufacturing facility in Oconee and Athens-Clarke counties near the eastern end of the highway.

The group’s outgoing chairperson, Tracey Stice of ArunA Biomedical Inc. of Athens, said the corridor's new branding “broadens the reach of interest” and encompasses a lot more potential development.

The JDA also agreed to move forward with the creation of a new web site for marketing the corridor.

And the group elected a new slate of officers. The new president is Chuck Horton, a member of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners. Vice president is Tommy Jennings, the president of the Barrow County Chamber of Commerce. The secretary is Chris Brown, senior vice president of Duke Realty’s Atlanta office; and Stice, who was elected treasurer.

The JDA is a regional authority with members appointed by the governing bodies of the four counties along the corridor. They include Athens-Clarke, Oconee, Barrow and Gwinnett.

E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To leave a comment you must approve it via e-mail, which will be sent to your address after submission.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: